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Concept of uprightness in baboons: assessment with pictures of realistic scenes

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Abstract

How nonhuman primates process pictures of natural scenes or objects remains a matter of debates. This issue was addressed in the current research by questioning the processing of the canonical orientation of pictures in baboons. Two adult guinea baboons were trained to use an interactive key (IK) on a touch-screen to change the orientation of target pictures showing humans or quadruped mammals until upright. In experiment 1, both baboons successfully learned to use the IK when that key induced a 90° rightward rotation of the picture, but post-training transfer of performance did not occur to novel pictures of natural scenes due to potential motor biases. In Experiment 2, a touch on IK randomly displayed the pictures in any of the four cardinal orientations. Baboons successfully learned the task, but transfer to novel pictures could only be demonstrated after they had been exposed to 360–480 pictures in that condition. Experiment 3 confirmed positive transfers to novel pictures, and showed that both the figure and background information controlled the behavior. Our research on baboons therefore demonstrates the development and use of an “upright” concept, and indicates that picture processing modes strongly depend on the subject’s past experience with naturalistic pictorial stimuli.

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Notes

  1. Two different interactive keys were introduced after the first training phase, each key inducing a rotation of the target picture in opposite direction. Control of these keys proved difficult for the two baboons, as they both showed medium to low performance after four sets of 8–100 training trials in which these keys were sequentially introduced following an ABBA design. It was thus decided that the next training and test phases will only use the interactive key inducing a clockwise rotation of the target picture.

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Acknowledgments

Dany Palleressompoulle is acknowledged for electronical support. Marc Martin is acknowledged for technical contribution. Dany JF and CP were supported by the EC SEDSU grant #012-984, and OMLL program. This work received an agreement from the “Comité regional d’éthique pour l’expérimentation animale”.

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  1. CNRS, Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives de la Méditerranée et Université de la Méditerranée, 31 ch Joseph Aiguier, 13402, Marseille cedex 20, France

    Joël Fagot, Elodie Bonté & Carole Parron

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  1. Joël Fagot
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  2. Elodie Bonté
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  3. Carole Parron
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Correspondence to Joël Fagot.

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Fagot, J., Bonté, E. & Parron, C. Concept of uprightness in baboons: assessment with pictures of realistic scenes. Anim Cogn 12, 369–379 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-008-0196-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-008-0196-6

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